Who's the Nuttiest Of Them All?

Via Digby, we see Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, a man who puts the "ass" in "association," is worried about the conservative soul.

The big winner in last night’s GOP debate was Rick Perry. This is for the simple reason that no one else won. The race from this point forward is Rick Perry and the Eight Dwarfs.

Hobbits, dwarfs--why do conservatives hate Little Americans? More important, why does anyone think that Perry, a man barely noticeable in Texas, will take the nation by storm?

The exchange between Pawlenty and Bachmann was spirited, and there was nothing inappropriate about it. Politics ain’t beanbag, as Lincoln famously observed. It’s a contact sport, and part of what you must do in the primary season is distinguish yourself from your competitors. You have to throw some elbows to do that.

Pawlenty was hurt by the exchange, because he took a swing at a girl. No matter how much progress we think we’ve made on gender equality, there is still something deep inside us that says men should use their strength to protect women, not attack them, and Pawlenty put on the full-court press last night.

These are the same type of people who state that men will be overcome by sin and primitive urges and rape any woman not dressed from neck to ankle. If men have an overwhelming urge to protect women and children, they sure have a strange way of showing it sometimes.

But Ms. Bachmann chose to get into the ring, and can’t complain if punches are thrown, nor should anyone complain on her behalf. That’s one of the reasons to question whether it’s a good idea for women to get involved in the rough and tumble of politics. I hate to see a woman attacked like Bachmann was last night, but she made herself vulnerable to it by throwing her hat into the ring.

She wore a low-cut presidential aspiration so she deserved it.

What has been done to Sarah Palin and what is being done to Michele Bachmann - the grotesque beating they have taken from the hostiles on the left (I’m not talking about Pawlenty here) - is a travesty and a shameful embarrassment to any culture which claims to have an enlightened view of the treatment of women.

I thought it was the slut's own fault?

But this is what conservative women who enter politics are choosing to accept. It is not right, but it is inevitable, since too many on the left are consumed with bitterness and hatred toward conservatives in general and conservative women in particular. They are enslaved to a driving, brooding passion to destroy, and the more attractive the conservative woman is, the more it feeds their blood lust. As captives to this dark, driving vitriol, they can’t help themselves. It will take the power of God to set them free from their own bondage to this mindless anger and rage. This means that a woman must count the cost, as Jesus taught, before jumping into the fray.

"Hitlery" Clinton might disagree.

Part of the problem here is that when a women mixes it up in the political arena, and gets punched, she must punch back. The danger to the woman here is that every time she punches back, which she must do, she hardens a little bit of her soul and sacrifices a little bit of her femininity. I’m not sure that’s a good trade. But each woman needs to make that choice for herself. No one else can or should make that decision for her.

Evidently femininity means weakness and strong women are hard, instead of soft and yielding like they are supposed to be. At least Mr. Fischer is generous enough to give women permission to fight back, even if it will kill their soul to do so.

It does not occur to Fischer that some women enjoy rhetorical fighting, and if they are punched they will punch back twice as hard. Perhaps Fischer's opinion of their femininity will suffer, but that's just a risk we'll have to take.

Quick hits on the rest of the debate:

Romney came across as plastic. He completed his abject flip-flop on marriage, going from being the man who imposed same-sex marriage on America by executive fiat in 2004 to a man who now supports a federal marriage amendment to undo what he himself did in Massachusetts. He has a real credibility problem on social issues.

Who would have thought that a Mormon would not be Crazy For Jesus enough for the AFA. I can't wait until the fundamentalist Christians find out that Mormons don't believe in the Holy Trinity.

After accusing Romney of flip-flopping on health care, Fischer moves on to Ron Paul, whom he dismisses as being soft--or maybe he means feminine--on Islam, the religion of Jihad.

Paul did remind us that liberty comes from the Creator. But his understanding of liberty includes the liberty to snort cocaine, shoot up heroin, and indulge in prostitution and sodomy. That’s not liberty, that’s bondage. His views promote license, not liberty.

Oh, come on, Fischer, one man's Tree of Freedom is another man's cocaine binge.

Santorum was the strongest on the platform on the pro-life issue. He rightly would make no exceptions even for rape, since in America we don't punish a child for the sins of his father. He's absolutely correct.

These people can create a world-wide Caliphate conspiracy to cover every women in America in a black cotton tent yet they can't envision Muslim men raping nice conservative girls to force them to raise an army of secret Muslim-American Jihadists? Where is Mark Steyn when you need someone to whip up a nice batch of sexual hysteria?

Huntsman made himself a non-factor by admitting he has no economic plan on his website, which should have been his first order of business. He also indicated he’d be for amnesty once the border is secure, a position anathema to most conservatives. Romney repeated the canard that we are a “nation of immigrants.” We’re not. Eighty-five percent us were born here.

Our national history began the moment Fischer's mother pushed him out of the womb.

Huntsman also argued that he as governor has the best record in the field on jobs. He loses that argument once Perry gets in the race tomorrow.

Bottom line: the race is Rick Perry’s to lose.

Rick Perry has the frightened-doe look of a man with two dozen pairs of red high-heeled shoes, size 13, hidden deep in his closet. He might very well be a model conservative candidate but his hell-bent chase to be the Craziest In The Land makes him the evil Queen, not one of the Seven Dwarfs.